Published

Links & Accomplishments, 10/1/2017 to 10/7/2017

Brief Update

Expressed with pluses and minus:

+ Matt’s and my 13th anniversary was yesterday, celebrated with a trip to the happiest place on Earth: the Melting Pot.
+ I wrote ~7000 words this weekend on a new story!
+ Our guild finally downed Kil’jaeden in heroic Tomb of Sargeras in WoW.

– Ulnar neuropathy is status quo. Still numb. It might be getting better, but infinitely slowly.
– The story I’m working on is best titled The Story That Shouldn’t Be, because it has no audience except me. It’s basically a fantasy romance, but people who haven’t read Lioness have no reason to care about these characters, and people who have are more likely to wonder why I’m writing the pairing I’m writing. In answer: because it tickles me.
– Internet has been on the fritz, and has picked delightful times to just stop working — like in the middle of heroic Sisters of the Moon, with me healing and Matt tanking.
– Our septic system started backing up again this weekend! Seeing as we just had the tank emptied in August, this meant a blockage. We had an emergency visit from Roto Rooter, and someone is coming with a camera later this week to make sure the main line hasn’t collapsed. Again.
– My cat Brianna has been wheezing for five days or so now. We took her to the vet after it started, not too alarmed, as she was still eating and being her normal bitchy self. They told us it was probably some sort of sinus infection and gave us antibiotics, saying it didn’t seem like there was any lung involvement. There was no improvement, and in fact it seemed to get worse, so Matt took her to the emergency vet this morning. They saw definite lung involvement, so she’s now on oxygen and steroids, with a probable diagnosis of asthma or pneumonia. (And hopefully not heartworm or lungworm or lung cancer…)
– I fucked up my sleep schedule something awful this weekend, and ended up awake until… I don’t even know. 4 or 5 or 6am. So now I am taking a sick day because I am a wreck.

Links

I went looking for the origin of New Englanders’ love of Dunkin’ Donuts, and somehow ended up on a couple of essays by Michael Deresiewicz on The American Scholar, the magazine of Phi Beta Kappa. They synergized well with the current stuff going through my head about deep work, thanks to my recent read of Cal Newport’s book of the same name.

The Disadvantages of an Elite Education. I identified a lot with this one, having attended Vassar, which is a Seven Sisters college. In particular, this quote explains why I tend to struggle to build a writing career — I feel like it should be easier than it is:

They were talking about trying to write poetry, how friends of theirs from college called it quits within a year or two while people they know from less prestigious schools are still at it. Why should this be? Because students from elite schools expect success, and expect it now. They have, by definition, never experienced anything else, and their sense of self has been built around their ability to succeed. The idea of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them, defeats them.

Accomplishments

Writing
– Attended writing group
– Did ~2h of work on Lioness edits
– Wrote 2800 words on a new story in the world of Lioness
– Submitted “The Mirrors of Her Eyes” to Uncanny Magazine
– Submitted “Granny Hubbard” to Flash Fiction Online

Reading
– Read “Fluency”, by Matt Mikalatos, in Flash Fiction Online

Other Media
– Watched the RiffTrax of Oblivion — not the Tom Cruise movie, but a cheesy 90s sci-fi Western with George Takei as a drunken old-timey doctor making terrible Star Trek jokes (i.e. as he takes a swig of whiskey, “Jim Beam me up”). My commentary on this was largely, “This is the worst Sparks Nevada fanfic I’ve ever read.”
– Listened to Food Stuff, “You Butter Believe It’s a Two-Parter: Part 2”
– Listened to Food Stuff, “You Say Tomato, I Say Wolfpeach”
– Listened to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, “Bicameralism, Part 2: The Silent Pantheon.” I find the theory of the bicameral mind utterly fascinating, all the while admitting it seems improbable. However, I might use it to explain the differences between the two different types of uplifted creatures in Gods and Fathers, if I ever go back to that novel…
– Listened to Writing Excuses 12.34 – 12.36
– (finally finally finally) Downed Kil’jaeden in heroic Tomb of Sargeras, and got that cherished Ahead of the Curve achievement. (With a month to spare until Antorus comes out!) It was, as all our first kills are, “clean as fuck” — with only one tank, one healer, and two DPS surviving to the end. I survived until about 4% (I was the third and definitely weakest healer, on my resto shaman), but fuck phase three, fuck those obelisks, fuck that blazing orb, fuck Gravity Squeeze.

Social
– Had dinner at Cracker Barrel post-Madrigal with EB
– Celebrated my 13th anniversary with Matt at The Melting Pot